Award Winner - Betty Allen

September 14, 1989

Although she calls herself a retired homemaker, Betty Allen of Hampton worked for about 20 years as an executive secretary.

She worked first for an import-export firm, then with the Department of the Army and the State Department helping to rebuild Europe after World War II under the Economic Recovery Administration, which implemented the Marshall Plan.

She retired from the state department in 1956 to become a homemaker.

In 1970, she wanted to do more for the visually impaired and became a volunteer in the the Hampton Preschool Vision Screening Project sponsored by the Hampton Council of PTAs, of which she is a lifetime member, and the Virginia affiliate of the National Society to Prevent Blindness.

When she stopped volunteering for the project earlier this year to turn her work over to younger people, she was praised for distinguished service by the Virginia Congress of PTAs and the Hampton Council of PTAs. The local organization gave her a silver bowl in appreciation of her many years of work.

During her work with the project, she has been the certified instructor who trained the volunteers to do the screening of youngsters to detect vision problems. She also scheduled screening sessions and recorded statistics.

"The target group is children ages 3 through 6 in Hampton's elementary schools," she says. "We also screen children in private schools when requested. "We try to be as professional as possible, but our screening is not diagnostic and we don't pretend to diagnose. The screening indicates only the possibility of vision problems."

Children with problems are directed toward regular eye tests by ophthalmologists or optometrists, she says.

Allen still does a considerable amount of volunteer work at St. John's Episcopal Church in Hampton, where she is a member of the Altar Guild, a lay reader, a tour guide in summer and a volunteer for a number of other activities.

"I recently started reading the newspaper for the visually impaired on the radio show Voice of the Peninsula over York High School radio station WYCS on Mondays," she says.

Allen became interested in helping the visually impaired while in a sorority at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., where she received a bachelor of arts degree, majoring in Spanish, with a minor in English.

The widow of Walter Allen, she has a son, David, and a daughter, Susan.